The Possibility of Prayer: Finding Stillness with God in a Restless World

One thing that I really like reading is anything to do with spiritual formation or practices. I think the reason for this is because I really like not just understanding the practices fellow Christians have adopted, but seeing how they have been transformed by the practice. Yet, I haven’t really read too many books on any particular practice. Most often these books come as a long-winded version of “just do it.” However, I now have a few books sitting on my shelf that dive into the practice of prayer. I think I’ve been shying away from these books because prayer is just simply a practice that I’ve not been very good with; not because I don’t believe in it, but because it’s not usually my go-to move throughout my day. So I decided it was time to change all that and picked up The Possibility of Prayer by John Starke. This book was published in February of 2020 by InterVarsity Press. Starke is the pastor of Apostles Church Uptown in New York City. While I was certainly apprehensive about starting this book, it ended up not being the same, flat, “how-to” sort of book that I’ve read many times before.

Oh No! I Messed Up

We often hear how important it is to develop spiritual disciplines. These include fasting, Bible study, prayer, and many more. We are told that the importance of these disciplines is develop ourselves in Christlikeness; so we can be the people God created us to be. Yet, we’re human and therefore, imperfect. What does this mean for our spiritual disciplines? It means that we will mess up. We may set out to prayer, every morning, at 5am (before anyone else in the house is up), for 15 minutes. We are able to accomplish this task for awhile, but one day you wake up and its 7am. Oh No! You messed up but what do you do now? Below are some ideas that I have for you to remember when this happens.

The Gospel of John: John 7

Jesus begins this chapter by traveling in secret and ends it by causing division among the Jewish leadership. What is the right thing to do? Should you follow the rules, or break them in order to do the right thing? It probably seems like an easy answer, but it certainly is not easy to practice. Jesus seems to give us an answer to this problem while teaching, once again, in Jerusalem.